


Limited Victory

by juliandarling



Category: The Passion - Jeanette Winterson
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:00:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliandarling/pseuds/juliandarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I remember myself a devourer of flesh, human and fowl alike. It seemed in those days my appetite was ravenous: I could eat an entire chicken for dinner and gobble up the rest of Europe for dessert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limited Victory

**Author's Note:**

> This is wildly historically inaccurate, and liberally uses themes from Winterson's text. I am greatly indebted to my dear friend [la_dissonance](http://la-dissonance.dreamwidth.org) for their superb beta reading.
> 
> Warnings: UST, misogyny, brief mentions of injuries of war, graphic carnivorism, underage (Henri's age is debatable, better safe than sorry, however).

I remember myself a devourer of flesh, human and fowl alike. It seemed in those days my appetite was ravenous: I could eat an entire chicken for dinner and gobble up the rest of Europe for dessert. Roasted skin crackled beneath my teeth like the skeletons of my Grande Armée scraping over the rocky Channel beaches. With each bite I could hear the screams of the drowning, the tortured resonances echoing with the clash of cutlery against teeth. I took to using my fingers.

I'm telling you stories. Trust me.

 

Now that I am on this island the ocean speaks to me. She whispers sweet nothings in my ears, holds out seaweed hands beckoning. I am resisting her yet, I haven't finished writing my stories.

There is not enough chicken here. These English are attempting to starve me: to kill the Emperor by depriving him of fowl. I am sure this seems preposterous to you, but it is known that the Emperor only eats chickens. They mock me with cuts of steak and slices of pork. These English are horrible cooks, anyway.

When they deign to serve chicken, I think of Henri and his devotion to my passions.

 

I remember the camps of Boulogne fondly: there was an air of expectation, a weighty, pregnant pause before the onslaught. It was there that troops were trained and I would survey the extent and thrust of my forces.

Of course, that all changed the day the Channel decided she did not favour our conquest. What had been the beginning of something beautiful was coughed up on the French shores, blue and agonised, youthful corpses spat from the trenches of the sea. I should have known my appetite would deepen, that desire for flesh would not abate with the Channel's icy rejection. I pointed to the East, less the Channel's voracious desire pull me into her embrace.

Blue faces haunted my dreams, my dinners.

Henri brought me chicken after chicken, bare bones leaving at dawn.

Henri was quiet, with big ears and eyes and stomach. He brought me plates of fowl, and when I was not too irritable it pleased me to pass him scraps of chicken as I talked to my generals. He sat at my feet, under the table, more loyal than any of Joséphine's dogs, lips pressed to my fingers, my fingers pressing meat into his wet mouth.

I let him go when his dark lashes, batting shadows against his pale cheeks, fluttered in exhaustion. He would return to his dirty tent, and his ragtag companions, and I would lean over my large drafting table, tempted to grind myself across the map of Europe.

What nights those were. A half-dessicated chicken and a map of my known world stretched out expectantly before me like a tart on silk sheets. Spatters of chicken flesh and gristle would land on the map as I plotted courses and imagined battles, smearing greasy stains across the delicate calligraphy and carefully etched mountain ranges. Thoughts of young Henri sacked out in his cot, nubile limbs tossing in nightmares of blue faces, ravaged me and sustained me through the chicken carcass and into a blushing dawn.

He would arrive, sleep stained breath and yellow crusted eyes, tripping over tent stakes and with a crooked tooth smile, to take the empty platter back to the kitchens where it would be once more laden with chicken and returned. I would pinch his ear, as if to drag him towards me and throw him across that map of Europe, and would only let go once I was satisfied my thumb had marked his skin with a red crescent that would not fade before I saw him next.

 

I sent him on leave before the coronation: I had fears I would not survive those weeks readying for the power that I would seized. Dreams of blue faces, and godful retribution rattled in my skull. A young corporal, a severe boy promoted too soon, served me chicken instead and I sent back the meat near untouched.

By the time Henri returned to me, in Paris, my dreams had worsened. But my desires had only swelled and spread, and a strange madness settled upon me like a cloak.

I dressed him as a courtier, because it amused me to see him flush at how tight the breeches were. It certainly amused Joséphine, who appreciated his innocence in a sea of sharks.

And it seemed truly that Henri, server of chicken, was a wee lamb surrounded by wolves. The other soldiers, apart from his motley companions, mocked him from afar; he never seemed troubled by it, only devoted to me and his work.

 

 

My dear Joséphine was born on an island very different than Saint Helena. She often spoke dreamily of the flora and fauna of Martinique, and its humid hazy climate. If I close my eyes I can imagine her in diaphanous lace and white, reclining on a chaise longue in the atrium of her father's plantation.

Saint Helena is wind-swept and littered with my ghosts. There are no roses or geraniums here, and I am sure that even if I asked for her, Joséphine would not come. She writes me still, but I do not reply. Her last letter says that Henri wrote her, but I burned the letter before I could be tempted to finish reading and find out what truly happened to him.

I prefer to think of him as he was that time we spent at Boulogne, before he lost his eye and his love for me, with that shy grin beneath all that dirt and that hesitant blush that would bloom across his cheeks, prettier than any of Joséphine's darling flowers.

Now the sargasso seas parts me from Joséphine and Henri. It seems more and more likely I will die here without my passions.

 

I think he loved me a little less when he lost his eye at Austerlitz. He believed I desired him less, that my passion was not as grand. But it seemed that the gaping, pus-filled wound where his beautiful eye had been could not assuage my hunger.

I wanted to lick the blood from the corner of his ravaged eye lids, and chew on the soft folds of his mouth. Instead I had him bring me chicken after chicken, and I savoured his shiver when I touched the back of his soft neck.

I wrote to Joséphine incessantly, though we had long been divorced. Letter after letter of passions, for her, for the world, for Henri, for chicken. The longer we trekked East the more feverish my writings became: some I never sent for fear she would find me mad and beg my return to France and to sanity.

No, I had to refuse all sanity, all reason. All I needed was my insatiable passion, my unquenchable desire. Such passions could drive a man across a continent with wings on his feet.

 

The moment I placed that crown on my head, it felt as if some thirst in me had been slaked. A peaceful silence settled upon me and I felt at home in my bones for if only mere few hours. That silence was only disturbed when I remembered that I had sent Henri back to Boulogne and a mere servant brought me chicken.

It was a disappointing realisation: not all my dreams were attainable, not all my yearnings could be assuaged by placing a golden crown upon my own head. Some desires were always just out of reach, often by my own hand.

Later it would be wildly apparent to me how foolish I had been to send him away, and how foolish it had been to set Joséphine aside in favour of hopes for an heir.

 

His hands were coarse and strong from wringing chicken throats, and his eye was old and tired from seeing the fruits of war. I tried not to notice the lag in his step, the lack of response when I grabbed his chin. He was slipping away.

The boy I had yearned for had long since disappeared, and the man I coveted was already fading fast. Henri was no longer mine, this was apparent. And yet he brought me chicken each night, and I still dreamed of stretching him across that map of Europe and devouring his flesh.

And when he vanished one night, I knew it was over. Yes, I slogged through a bit more snow and sleet but all passion had vanished. What was Russia, without his one remaining eye staring at me with love and respect? What was dominion without him, and a plate of roast chicken, at my side?

I am sure you think I jest. Remember, I am telling you stories.

 

The emptiness of Saint Helena rings with his laughter, his sweet smile. Sometimes I can smell her sweet roses. I ache for their flesh, and I dream of blue faces and the gaping hole where his eye had been.

Regrets are for lesser men, and I have none.

Trust me.


End file.
